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Kennedy Center Honors a Boxing Day TV treat

Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro and others entertain as they pay tribute to Kennedy Center honourees, Dec. 26 on CBS

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, left, with this year's Kennedy Center honourees, from left top row, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, David Letterman; from left bottom row, Buddy Guy, Natalia Makarova and Dustin Hoffman. (Kevin Wolf / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

If you have groaned through as many long-winded, dull and sanctimonious awards shows as I have, you’ll find the Kennedy Center Honors a refreshing treat. The annual event took place in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, and the crisply edited annual CBS telecast is set for Dec. 26 (CBS at 9 p.m.), the perfect Boxing Day bonbon.

There’s a reason this annual event has won the Emmy for Best Variety Special four years in a row.

A key to its success is that there are no envelopes to be opened and the honourees don’t get a chance to thank everyone they’ve ever met. In fact, they don’t say a word. They sit in the mezzanine along with Barack and Michelle Obama, sometimes smiling, clapping or blowing kisses. But mercifully, we never hear them speak.

As usual, a mix of D.C. VIPs and showbiz luminaries gather in their tuxes and ball gowns at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where, as usual, JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy does the hosting duties.

This time, as always, the inclusion of musical stars in the list of winners is a crucial ingredient, because it means there will be many high-powered performers not just paying tribute but entertaining the audience and getting everyone into an upbeat mood.

But it was comedy stars who stole the show this time, alternately lauding and roasting Letterman.

“Was he a brilliant, subtle, passive-aggressive parody of a talk-show host?” was the question Tina Fey recalled asking when she first encountered this upstart from Indiana circa 1980 on morning TV. “Or was he just some Midwestern goon who was a little bit off? Well, here we are 32 years later and time has proven there’s just no way of knowing.”

Alec Baldwin suggested that subjecting Letterman to this honour was a perfect way to make him squirm and put him through something he’d hate.

And Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond managed to segue from a salute to Letterman, and how Romano learned not to give up after a setback, into telling an Obama joke to the President’s face, with the camera present to record his reaction.

“Do you quit when you’re down one-to-nothing in the World Series?” he asked. “No, you keep going. Do you quit when you are down one-to-nothing in the debates? No, you keep going!”

Cut to Obama savouring the jest about the lowest point of his campaign for re-election.

Makarova, the great ballerina who left the Kirov and defected to the West, joining American Ballet Theatre because she needed new choreography to fulfill her talent, seemed isolated, possibly because the tribute performances to her were dignified and haute, whereas this was a night in which down-and-dirty antics trumped high culture.

Robert De Niro’s tribute to Dustin Hoffman was mercifully laced with humour.

“What Dustin did for all of us was to make it OK to be a character actor,” De Niro said. “He broke the mould of the movie star as handsome leading man.”

But he also acknowledged his friend’s reputation for being difficult and demanding, describing Hoffman as simultaneously “world-class” and “a colossal pain in the ass.” Then came a sensational array of clips from The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Man and Tootsie.

Morgan Freeman, a fellow Southerner who paid tribute to Buddy Guy, said the son of a sharecropper found something no one else had in what Morgan and others considered “gutbucket music.”

Guy went on to become one of the greatest blues artists of all time, winning five Grammys along the way.

Beth Hart and Tracy Chapman were among the performers demonstrating why. And Bonnie Raitt led a medley that included “My Time” and “Home Sweet Chicago.”

Not surprisingly, the roof-raising rock music was left for the end of the evening as Lenny Kravitz, Kid Rock and the Foo Fighters performed songs by Led Zeppelin, the British rock band whose impact did not become clear until long after their peak years.

“Stairway to Heaven” brought the event to its conclusion and the crowd to its feet.

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